"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" is a highly acclaimed essay written by Laura Mulvey in 1973, originally published in the renowned British film theory journal Screen. To date, the essay can be found in many other collections and anthologies, and, like the work of Jean-Louis Baudry and Christian Metz, contributed to a psychoanalytic surge in film theory through the 1970s and 1980s. Her contribution, however, was the first scholarship to explore feminism, film theory, and psychoanalysis in tandem, and introduced the concept of the "male gaze" into academic circles.
Eventually, the concept of the male gaze, among others, reached the broader lexicon and provided a bridge from the likes of Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud to contemporary film classrooms, feminist circles, and political discourse. Arguably, the most salient and powerful feature of the essay was Mulvey's insistence on psychoanalysis as more than a clinical practice or abstract theoretical model; she viewed her psychoanalytic reading of film to be a feminist act, imbued with political ammunition. In the essay, Mulvey famously argues that traditional films functioned under the tacit presumption of male viewership, who identified with the male protagonist. Within this framework, the female characters are positioned as passive objects of male desire, and no space remains for alternative perspectives, desires, or structures of power.
